Interview

Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen

In this interview from 2017, Maxine Hong Kingston, one of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s former college professors, interviews Viet on writing and his book, The Sympathizer.  Maxine, also an author,  begins the interview with a quote from the book about “waking up” and the significance of that term as it pertains to the narrator and to Viet, while injecting humor by relating a story of Viet falling asleep in her class.  Viet describes his awakening, starting politically and intellectually during his years at college relating to his experiences as a refugee and Vietnamese-American but ultimately only coming to fruition by awakening emotionally to those experiences.  Moving from the rational and concrete ideas to the emotions behind the ideas allowed him to become a better writer and to fully engage with his work.  He describes having to overcome a lifetime of repressing and containing emotions about his past to allow his work to evolve.  They then discussed the ending quote of his narrator, “We will live”, which is said as the narrator is fleeing Vietnam on a boat to America.  The ending, instead of being hopeful and optimistic, is more realistic.  He wanted to express how refugees “Acknowledge ourselves as Americans but not for the American Dream, but for the blood and sacrifice as well.” Maxine also shares some of her memories of Viet in the classroom, about Viet being shy and not talking much.  Viet discusses how her class and others like it planted the seeds in his mind that ultimately lead to the themes he grapples with in his books and short stories.  They also discuss how his trips to Vietnam influenced parts of his book, specifically the details such as how a massage parlor announces they are open for business.  Finally, they discussed having fun and whether or not Viet had fun writing.  His parent’s Catholic upbringing influenced Viet’s work ethic.  Their example of sacrificing their time and lives to “capitalism and religion” influenced how he approaches life and writing.  He acknowledged he wrote and rewrote some of his short stories as many as 50 times over 13 years, but that experience allowed him to “have fun” writing The Sympathizer over a relatively shorter 2 year period.

Watching the interview allowed me to appreciate how Viet’s life and experiences influence his writing.  Not only does he write about the concrete facts surrounding the experiences of Vietnamese refugees, but he allows the emotion he felt as a refugee and Vietnamese-American to come out in his work. As an aspiring writer, I appreciate him opening up about his writing process and the struggles he endured over his career.